In brief#
People sometimes report vivid experiences during a medical crisis, and some of those reports are of a place of judgment. They are often sincere, often life-changing for the person who had them, and they are sometimes offered as evidence for what final punishment is like.
The argument on this page is entirely methodological. Where a reported experience conflicts with Scripture, Scripture governs. That principle is not difficult, and it is not controversial among Christians. What matters is that it be applied evenly, to reports of heaven and reports of hell alike.
The objection, stated properly#
The objection deserves better than a dismissal, because the person making it is usually making a reasonable point.
Reports of this kind are not always vague. Some are detailed, some are given by people with nothing to gain from telling them, and some come from people with no prior religious commitment and no expectation of anything. If someone comes back from the edge of death convinced they have seen a place of conscious torment, it seems callous to shrug that off, and arbitrary to accept a person's testimony about everything else in their life and refuse it here.
Behind the objection is a fair instinct: God has communicated through visions before, and Scripture does not say that he stopped.
The methodological reply#
Scripture governs where the two conflict#
The Christian principle is not that experience is worthless. It is that Scripture is the standard by which any claimed revelation is tested.
But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you any “good news” other than that which we preached to you, let him be cursed.
Turn to the law and to the testimony! If they don’t speak according to this word, surely there is no morning for them.
Paul's test is not whether a message is delivered impressively, or whether the messenger is sincere. It is whether it agrees with what has already been given. That test applies to a vision reported in a hospital exactly as it applies to anything else.
The test has to run in both directions#
Here is where the argument bites. When a Christian rejects a reported experience of heaven, the ground for rejecting it is normally that the picture of the afterlife it presents does not match what Scripture teaches. A report implying that essentially everyone arrives safely, whatever they believed or however they lived, conflicts directly with what Jesus says about the narrow way.
13“Enter in by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter in by it. 14Hownarrow is the gate, and restricted is the way that leads to life! Few are those who find it.
So: to the extent that reported experiences of heaven are set aside for conflicting with Scripture, consistency requires the same treatment of reported experiences of hell. A report cannot be admitted as doctrinal evidence when it supports a conclusion we already hold and excluded when it does not. Either reported experience is a source of doctrine or it is not.
The same holds for the content of the reports. Where an account of hell reproduces the imagery of popular culture rather than the language of Scripture, that account is measured against Scripture, not the other way round. This is not a claim that the person is lying. It is a claim about what counts as evidence for a doctrine.
The source document adds that such accounts frequently disagree with one another over specific details. That is an observation about a body of material this site has not surveyed, and it is reported here as the source's observation rather than asserted. It is offered as part of the reason the consistency question arises at all, not as a premise the argument rests on.
Why new visions would be needed at all#
There is also a question worth asking about purpose. If these are messages from God, what are they for? Does he need to convey some new truth in order to convince people to avoid judgment?
27“He said, ‘I ask you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house; 28for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, so they won’t also come into this place of torment.’ 29“But Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.’ 30“He said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31“He said to him, ‘If they don’t listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if one rises from the dead.’”
Abraham's answer to the rich man is that people who will not listen to Moses and the Prophets will not be convinced by someone rising from the dead. That answer was given about a body of revelation smaller than the one we now have. Someone did rise from the dead, and it did not persuade those who had already decided. The New Testament's position is that what has been given is sufficient.
No report can establish a duration#
One further point is simple and often overlooked. Whatever these experiences are, they end. The person returns and describes them. No reported experience lasts for eternity, which means no reported experience could establish the duration of anything.
That matters, because duration is the entire question in dispute between conditional immortality (CI) and eternal conscious torment (ECT). Both sides affirm that the judgment is real and that it is consciously experienced. A report of a distressing experience of judgment, even taken entirely at face value, would not tell us whether what was glimpsed continues without end or comes to an end. It is not evidence on the point at issue.
What this argument establishes#
- A consistent method requires treating reported experiences of heaven and of hell in the same way.
- Where a reported experience conflicts with Scripture, Scripture governs.
- No such report could establish the duration of final punishment, which is the question actually in dispute.
What it does not establish by itself#
It does not establish any generalisation about what proportion of these reports are of one kind or another. It does not establish that they do not occur, that the people reporting them are mistaken about having experienced something, or that there is no medical, psychological or other explanation for them. Those are separate questions, and this page takes no position on them.
Related sections and passages#
- The rich man and Lazarus, for the passage this argument draws on.
- Is annihilation really punishment, for what conditionalism affirms about the conscious experience of judgment.
Sources and notes#
Joseph Dear gives this topic extended treatment from a conditionalist standpoint, considerably beyond the few points made here.
[Dear, pages 499-517]